Raise the Hammer

Comment 114424

By Douglas (registered) | Posted October 29, 2015 at 10:34:22
in reply to Comment 114413

Even if you could be right and the funds stay closer to Brampton. It still stands that the specific pot of fund is now going back to the Moving Ontario Forward fund. Ontario dangled the carrot many times, with Bramptonn repeatedly refusing. This was the final chance. The Brampton funding deadline is now passed.

Now Brampton's LRT falls over to a future infrastructure fund. For the moment, Brampton's LRT is, effectively cancelled, from the perspective of this pot of money. From a technical perspective, the Brampton LRT may be coming later, but not with these dollars.

Brampton now needs to apply for a funds from a future transit budget, rather than the budget that was granted to Hurontario, Hamilton, etc in this round. There are multiple confirmation from multiple Ontario government sources including news reporters such as CBC.

The Federal government has promised more transit funding, so raising the publicity on low-lying-apple LRT enhancements is still to all our mutual benefit.

Also, federally, more transit funding is becoming available, so there might be more forthcoming for both Brampton (albiet from a different "pot of money"); and Hamilton (either "this pot" or a different "pot of money"). They can still spin politics that it is both Hamilton and Brampton. There might even be something for that importantly needed $300M bus garage for HSR expansion, as a federal ask, possibly.

Oh, and I'm not 100% sure it is a bad precedent. The lesson to other cities are: "If you're repeatedly refusing the infrastructure carrot, or lobby for alternatives that everybody is comfortably agreeing on, then another city needs this carrot crop. We may be able to try again with next year's crop of carrots, if the political weather is favourable."